So, Avalon is SO excited to be in Primary now.  She is a sunbeam and loves to sing the songs and be a big girl.  And, she surely is growing up.  Look how adorable she is!  Before I know it she will be 16 and dating.  Yikes!  Love that sweetie!

Sister Love

A new hair do every day.  I think she just had a bath here.

Talia is a happy baby.  Full of smiles and sunshine.

 

Talia has also taken to babbling the last couple of days.  She is so cute and seems so serious in trying to communicate.  It is precious.

 

 

 

First, I have only one picture from Christmas.  Here are the girls with Grandpa Pratt.   I love that Avy’s face is smeared with chocolate.  I couldn’t get a picture with all three looking at the camera.  Oh well…

 

Now, the rest of these photos were taken on the 27th, I think.  Somehow the date on the camera reverted back to January of 2003.  Not so, fair reader.  We have since fixed the camera settings….

Here are a few shots of our dear sweet Talia Marie.  She is such a cutie and delight in our family.  I just love her!

I wanted you to take note of how long her hair is getting.  It just keeps GROWING!!   It now gets in her eyes if I don’t take special precautions to keep it out.

Look how long it is in the back!!

So, I am constantly swiping it out of her face.  I need to get some little clips that will hold it back better.

This is a constant site in our house as Talia is often being loved by her big sister.

**************

 

 

Well,  I hope you have enjoyed these pics of our littlest angel.  May you all have a wonderful and Happy New Year!  Here’s to 2012.  May it be a year filled with goodness and love.

 

Happy New Year!

 

 

Our dear Brother, Son, Cousin, Father, John Pratt, is soon to pass over to the other side.  He practically has one foot in the grave already.  Poor John is (almost) dead.

John Calvin Pratt turns 40 this Saturday and we are gathering to mourn and offer our condolences.

Services will be held as follows:

Saturday, November 5th, 2011.

We will gather at 4:30 and the “ward” will be providing the dinner at 5pm.

If you would like to help with our dinner, the following items are needed:

Salad/dressing

Jello Salad

9×13 Cake, any flavor

Funeral Potatoes

 

In lieu of flowers, a special trust fund has been set up at the Bank of _________.  (Not!–just thought that would be funny to write.)

Sympathy Cards and wearing black in honor of the soon to be deceased would be appropriate.

We hope to see you on Saturday to “celebrate” the life of our dear John.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

This was the obituary (invitation) I sent out to our nearby family.

Yep.  John turned 40 last month.  We had a wonderful celebration of his life.  Actually, it was more of a fun family get together with great food.  Grandma Pratt was there, as well as Michael & Mary (and family), and Joe & Elizabeth (and family.)  Also, John’s cousin, Michael, and his family attended as well.  We forgot to get out the camera earlier, so we only caught a few folks in pics.

 

John and Michael with Mary’s beautiful R.I.P. card.

 

This little wonder was so adorable toddling all over my house.

 

 

 

One of the appropriate gifts John received.  He’s going to need these soon!

 

The kids enjoyed a rousing game of “pin the pterodactyl in the sky.”

 

Jello salad–of course.

 

What’s left of the ham….

 

These were the star of the show.  Kelly (Michael’s wife) made THE BEST funeral potatoes.  Yum!

 

Well, John handled everything very well.  He wasn’t expecting us all to show up wearing black and to totally make fun of his age, but he handled it gracefully.  We had a wonderful evening with our family.

Thanks, John, for being a fantastic and loving father, son, cousin, friend, and husband.

We love you!

November 2nd (shown in this pic) was the first day I noticed Talia sucking on some particular fingers.  I took a picture to note this special day.  Sure enough, for the past two weeks she keeps coming back to these two for comfort.

These are the same two fingers that I used to suck when I was a baby.  Maybe it is genetic.

So sweet.  They are the best!  Right, Talia?

These are some of the jack-o-lanterns that the boys carved.  I love that they can do it all themselves now.  I just hand them a bowl and tell them to do it outside.

They gut them, carve them and hand me the bowl back.  I then will fish out the seeds and roast them, but that is about it.  So nice!!

 

We had a fun Harvest Fest Halloween party with some of our home school friends.  It was a beautiful night.  The next day we had over two inches of snow on the ground.  Big drop in temperature.  Here is Calvin with some of his friends.

Calvin did dress up as Ivanhoe.  He made his own chain mail armor.  One of the dads also dressed up.  He made his own chain mail armor as well.  Very nice!  He did it as a youth.  Calvin was pretty inspired.

Here I am with my typical ol’ standby.  Talia is a flower.

I didn’t get my camera out, so these shots are all from my friend, Jill.  Avalon was a poodle, Ivan was a homeless bum, and Reed was Robin Hood.

Happy Halloween!

We are just having too much fun with our new little baby.  She is so smiley and a delight in our home.  I did absolutely nothing with her hair and this is what it looked like one day.  Serious.  So, I put on the appropriate onesie and took some pics.

I think she favors her cousin, Lily, in the pic below.

 

 

***************

Two Month Pictures.  Talia is growing so fast.  It’s not fair!  These were taken last Sunday.

 

 

************************

 

We inherited this cute little sweater that I believe was hand knitted by Great Grandma Katherine Pratt.  I love the little flowers on it.

 

 

***************************

 

And, finally, I couldn’t resist putting her in piggies yesterday for church.  It was pretty cute and she got lots of fun comments.

Well, we just about died laughing when I took the piggies out last night!  So funny!  I guess I need to give her a bath today so that her hair will go back to “normal”….  Whatever that is….

Bat Ears

 

Have a great day!

We blessed Talia a few weeks ago.   It was a lovely blessing and it was so nice to spend time with family.  A special Thank you to everyone who took time to share this special day with us.  And, we missed those who weren’t able to come!

Click HERE for a slideshow with more pictures.

Obviously, the comment we most hear about our baby is, “Look at ALL that HAIR!!”  I guess it is less common for a little one to be born with so much.  It is fun to have a girl with so much hair.

 

I really love Talia’s hair right after a bath.  It curls up and looks like she has a perm.

Then, it starts to relax a bit.

By the way, check out this adorable quilt that my sis-in-law, Allison, made for Talia.  It is just gorgeous and I love it.  Allison is so talented!

Here is the back of the quilt.  I love the fabric she chose for this precious gift.

 

On Sunday I decided to try a pony tail.  It worked!  One month old and I can already put bows in her hair.  (And we are not talking about the glue in kind.)  Not to compare my children, but Avalon was 11 months old before I was able to do anything.  (You can see the pics of her first piggies HERE.)

Talia looks great in red, don’t you think?

And, here she is smiling.  She really does smile when I coo at her and tell her to smile.  I know…she’s advanced.  Ha!  I know you don’t believe me, but it is true.  It’s NOT just gas.  :)  She’s been doing it for a couple weeks now.

 

Daddy’s Girls

See, here she’s smiling again!  It ‘s true!

 

It is hard to believe our little Talia has been with us a month!  Although I forget how much time taking care of a newborn is, it seems like just yesterday that she was born.  She is such a ray of sunshine in our lives.

Elizabeth took some beautiful pictures of “just us girls” yesterday.  Click below for some highlights.

Click Here for Talia’s One Month Photos.